Why build rockets when you can just press "up?" That's the logic behind Elevator 2010, a consortium aiming to create an elevator to orbit by—you guessed it—2010. Last year, NASA held a competition to create "beam powered" vehicles (one of the two key technologies behind space elevators) as one of its Centennial Challenges. Nobody won, and so the $100,000 prize has doubled this year, and according to announcements at the International Space Development Conference, the next round of competition will be held during the X Prize Cup in October.

If you're wondering what beam powered vehicles have to do with the whole elevator design model, let me take a stab at explaining how these things work: Beam powered robot thingies, which are solar powered, ascend paper-thin "tethers" attached to satellites in farther-than-geo-synchronous orbit, about, oh, 62,000 miles high. That's it—no blast off, exorbitant cost, dangerous reentry (the elevators never break 120 mph vertical speed). In fact, it's not unlike an enormous game of endless tether ball. Simple, except for one thing: The other key technology is the tether itself, which, according to Elevator 2010, will be made out of a possibly magical "carbon nanotube composite material," according to a primer on E2010's site.

Oddly enough, the concept of space elevators actually predates the idea of geosynchronous satellites—in fact, many point to science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke's vision of giant elevators to space as the very basis for geosynch satellites. But that's neither up nor down. In the meantime, MSNBS's Alan Boyd has plenty more to say about the new competitions over at Cosmic Log. —Benjamin Chertoff